slides

Avoiding deaths by PowerPoint

Data Storytelling and Python to the rescue

Sebastián Flores, PyCon US 2024, May 20th

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Who

Sebastián Flores aka sebastiandres
Chief Data Officer at uPlanner
Contributor to Python Chile
Collaborator to Streamlit and Vizzu
http://sebastiandres.xyz

Agenda

Never
kill
the
suspense

Storytelling?

It just works

Data Storytelling:
using Storytelling to create presentations that will be remembered and that create impact

We are only as good as our communication skills. If you’re really really good, the god of anything, but cannot articulate your ideas and communicate effectively, you’ll only be as good as some bad with great communication skills. Don’t make the mistake. Learn to communicate effectively. [Visual of a lake? A multiplication? A lever!] Public speaking is a lever. Think of Sherlock Holmes. We can admire his prodigious mind and memory only because of the work of Doctor John Watson. It’s not enough to crack the case and solve the mystery. We need to be able to collect the important facts and to tell an engaging story. Same goes for data science. It’s not enough to know the latest library or model the problem properly, it’s all about distilling the important fact that your boss needs to know to make the important decisions.

DS is the new DS

Skills vs Tools

Skills for Data Storytelling

Data Storytelling?

It’s easy to consume but hard to prepare

What is Data Storytelling

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What The hero’s journey

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One of the secrets of Storytelling is that all stories have “The hero´s journey” - something studied by Joseph? Campbel on the ??, which sort of says that there is a common structure: normal world - conflict and call to adventure - … - resolution - return the normal world. Why should you care about this? This structure, this pattern, works. It’s engaging and the brain cannot avoid caring about the end. It creates an open loop, and people want to closure. It’s a pattern that works. If you have to remember only 1 thing from this talk, remember this: The audience for your presentation, treat each one of them as a hero on their own. They have their own inner world, and your presentation disrupts that world. You share with them a knowledge, something that SHOULD change how they see the world, the tools they have, anything. At least one phrase to be remembered. If nothing changes for the audience, they wont remember anything a couple of days or even hours after your talk. Memory is very selective. That’s why brains evolved to like stories. Now, how to connect this to python and tools?

Crash course on Data Storytelling

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Example - Spotify

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The first secret of Data Storytelling

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Visualization tools for Data Storytelling

Data Exploratory tools

Tableau
Microsoft’s PowerBI
Google’s Looker/Data Studio Too many options! User is responsible for finding the insight.

Data Explanatory Tools

So many options! * Oldies: Matplotlib * Mainstream: Plotly, Altair * Others: You are in charge of telling the story. Simple is better.

Simple is memorable

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Vizzu

A short vizzu example

Presentation tools
for Data Storytelling

Presentation tools

Oldies: PowerPoint
Interactive: quarto, JupyterNotebook+RISE
Other: revealjs, …

Decision flow for the tools

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PowerPoint: Use this if you have little time and need to create a presentation that’s disposable (one time effort). Might be the most configurable (design). Also, consider that you might need to share the file. Code is not executable nor properly formatted. Quarto: Use this if you have enough time and you have a central subject with different “output sources” a book, a presentation, some lab reports, etc. You will be able to to easily copy-paste code, text and images, keeping things up to date easily. You can execute code and integrate the results on the presentation, but code is not executable on the presentation. JupyterLab+RISE: Use this if you need to execute code live on the presentation and do not need much personalization. Streamlit: You want to code something very interactive, closer to a webpage than to a presentation. You can spend a good amount of time tinkering and trying a half-crazy programmer (me).

Slide XX: Quarto + altair/vizzu: real time visualizations [5 mins]

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XX +1

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Jupyter Notebook + RISE + Python: real time code evaluation [5 mins]

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XX +1

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Wrap up

Conclusions and Learnings [3 mins]

Storytelling helps convincing and remembering
Data Storytelling will become a top skill
Skills and tools to learn!

To keep learning

Books
“Storytelling with data” world: book, (free/paid) webinars, podcasts, etc.

Feedback

Questions?